Our speaker for this webinar was Luis Gil Abinader. He is is a senior researcher at Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, working on access to medicines and vaccines. Prior to joining KEI Luis worked as a Fellow with the Interdisciplinary Centre of Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation (CIECTI) in Argentina. He received his Law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) in the Dominican Republic, and a Masters in Intellectual Property from the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), in Argentina.
Mr. Abinader raised a number of quite intriguing insights. One was the intimate connection between politics and medical technology. It is not for nothing that the vaccine developed was given the name "soberana"--or sovereignty. The vaccine development project appears to have the objective of being as potent a political medication as it is meant to be a potent response to COVID-19 itself. Also quite interesting has been the politics of knowledge sharing and tech transfer. Lastly the interaction--the coordination or lack of coordination between these efforts, especially between states whose political-economic models are different and sometimes adversarial, also raised some interesting issues. Lastly, the human rights implications of Cuban approaches to vaccine development and distribution also raises issues with respect to the efforts by either liberal democratic or the larger Marxist Leninist states to comply with their responsibilities within the international community under emerging human rights and sustainability (including the right to health) norms and standards.
The video recording may be accessed HERE: HERE for the ASCE Webinar Series 2021 Playlist
Some of the PowerPoint slides of the presentation follow below.
No comments:
Post a Comment